New Project: Background Info

Link to all related posts here.

I've been keeping this one in the shadows for literally the last year, but now that the project is actually rolling along--and I've gotten the go-ahead from the people I'm working with--I will shed some light on it. Also, to counter a deluge of links over words, there is a list of links at the bottom of the post.

So, last year (June 2010) at the Museum of Northwest Art's annual art auction, I did this piece*. It is a three-part painting of a section of downtown La Conner, from street-view. This was a big step for me, as I have never been really interested in architecture / buildings in general--that is until I stumbled upon BLDGBLOG. To my surprise, many people liked it, it sold, and I was approached by some people from the local Quilt & Textile Museum to work on a project with them.

What they wanted, was a very similar view of La Conner, but of the section of town that would showcase the Gaches Mansion, where the museum is housed. Part of this project was in part inspired by an old, Japanese scroll showing many houses and shops all lined up as you walked the road. This then inspired local quilters to do a similar thing, but with part of Anacortes--a neighboring city to La Conner--in a quilt, of course.

After a few meetings, we worked out that they wanted me to do larger paintings of buildings as I had done in my auction piece, and then those would be used as references for quilters to create a full, quilted version of my paintings. Right away, the Museum had told me that the show they wanted it for was in July 2012, which was when they would be hosting another exhibit of Japanese quilts, which fits, because all of this was initially inspired by an old Japanese scroll.

Very early on we made a rough timeline, where we would discuss the project fall 2010, I would complete my paintings by around summer 2011, which gave the quilters from fall 2011 to spring 2012 to create their quilt replicas of my work. Also, we agreed it was a good idea to have my paintings available for when the show opened in July 2012.

At the moment I am working on roughing out the buildings, inking, and painting several parts of the project, but I still wanted to let everyone in on the secret while I have a little bit of down time. In the next few weeks I'll update with some behind-the-scenes pics and explanations, so stay tuned, and enjoy the links below.
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Museum of Northwest Art's homepage.
* My original piece
La Conner's Chamber of Commerce page
BLDGBLOG's page -- lots of scrolling and exploring
Quilt & Textile Museum's homepage